The New American Cinema of the 1960s differed from conventional models of filmmaking in many ways: embracing chance, roughness of physical execution, an impoverishment of technical and financial facilities, but also freeing the filmmakers to create personal films that reflected their lives, their sexuality and their social beliefs. The “actors” in these films were really performing themselves, even if they were following a script; “performance” in experimental films of the 1960s was really an extension of each actor's personality and, often, actors were left to their own devices without traditional direction during the production of a film. This essay discusses some of the key films of the era, along with the directors and performers who created them.

Acting and performance styles in experimental films are many and varied, but all rely to some degree on the force of individual personality to relate to the film's intended audience. The nomad bikers in Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (USA, 1963), for example, are essentially performing themselves for the camera as part of the normal daily catalogue of ritualized behavior. Gerard Malanga as Victor, however – the Victor in Andy Warhol's Vinyl (USA, 1965) – working from Ron Tavel's script, delivers an exaggerated, over-the-top “declamatory” performance that was partly the result of Warhol's refusal to let the actors rehearse; Malanga was forced to read much of the script from enormous cue cards during the filming, essentially reading the scenario for the first time. Since all acting contains a certain element of theatricality, the strategy in experimental cinema depends either on complete improvisation (as in the case of Taylor Mead in Ron Rice's free form feature film The Flower Thief (USA, 1960)), or else upon a stylized sensibility that seems to bring to the forefront the essential artificiality, or performative nature, of acting.

Often, actors in experimental films are friends of the director, or else stage actors working on the fringe of performance arts and so there is a strong sense of exploration and uncertainty in experimental filmic acting styles; in many cases, the film is a combined voyage of discovery for both the performer and the director alike.